Public good diffusion limits microbial mutualism.

Microbial mutualism at a distance: The role of geometry in diffusive exchanges.

The exchange of diffusive metabolites is known to control the spatial patterns formed by microbial populations, as revealed by recent studies in the laboratory. However, the matrices used, such as agarose pads, lack the structured geometry of many natural microbial habitats, including in the soil or on the surfaces of plants or animals. Here we address the important question of how such geometr...

Symbiosis of Plants , 9 Animals , and Microbes

CIntroduction ........................... ................................................. .............. ......... .. ... .. .......................... 185 Life on Eruth ... ........ ... ... ............... ............ .. .. .. ................................................................................ 186 Parasitism and Pathogenicity .... ..... .......... .................................

Supplementary information for “Resource availability modulates the cooperative and competitive nature of a microbial cross-feeding mutualism”

Impact of spatial distribution on the development of mutualism in microbes

The evolution of mutualism is one of the long-standing puzzles in evolutionary biology. Why would an individual contribute to the group at the expense of its own fitness? Individual bacterial cells cooperate by secreting products that are beneficial for the community, but costly to produce. It has been shown that cooperation is critical for microbial communities, most notably in biofilms, howev...

Correction: Resource Availability Modulates the Cooperative and Competitive Nature of a Microbial Cross-Feeding Mutualism

Mutualisms between species play an important role in ecosystem function and stability. However, in some environments, the competitive aspects of an interaction may dominate the mutualistic aspects. Although these transitions could have far-reaching implications, it has been difficult to study the causes and consequences of this mutualistic-competitive transition in experimentally tractable syst...